we drive in circles

i think we attach ourselves to the scenery we grow up around. i used to look forward to going home and seeing familiar faces. i used to want to stay. i wanted to eat and drink and make music and laugh about the things that unfolded throughout the night and the day after to repeat, repeat, repeat. i still have love for these things, although it is a different love, an evolved love. it is no longer the clingy, depressing, teary, woe-to-loss-of-tomorrow love. it has become something deeper, something mature, a love with purpose, a love that can carry on. many things have contributed to this change, but i like to compare it to a blind man getting his sight back, a deaf man hearing for the first time, a dead man rising again. i believe one day my eyes were opened to the fact that we were driving in circles all along. the fast food joints that we invested so much time in would remain, would expand, would follow me through my college degree, my 9 to 5 job, my 4 bedroom house, my 2.5 children, and it would continue forever through my descendants if they chose to continue the path that i was on. i've found that i don't mind driving in circles as long as there is meaning and i am not sure if there is any so far. sometimes i just want to get out of the car and walk. to not pay so close attention to where my feet will step and look around at the new scenery even if i may fall. i've found that it is all about the heart. and i pray for change to come so that out of that root may come good fruit. to be righteous, not fighting to be right; to love, not condemn; to know the difference between right and wrong and the courage to say so, not accepting all, not rejecting all; to be faithful, not to be blindly believe; and to live in hope, not to die in defeat. i realize that i want to follow, not lead; i want to point others in the right direction then maybe the places and things we used to love would follow us to where we're going rather than us chasing them. the path will be narrow and rough compared to the smooth, wide road that we drive on, but at least the path will be straight and take us to new places, new experiences, to life.